I post this recipe every few years. It’s still a fan favorite, and honestly, it really is that good. You can adjust the heat on this one-if you really want to up the heat, overload it with superhot peppers and freeze it.

Firestarter Jam (Peach-Scotch Bonnet Jam)

3 cups sliced peaches

1 seeded, diced scotch bonnet pepper- I really would seed it. The heat level on this isn’t unbearable for me, but I don’t think I would leave the seeds in there either. If you can’t get a scotch bonnet, try a couple bird’s eye peppers or a habanero.

scant 1 1/2 cup sugar

1 1/2 table bottled lemon juice

Prep 3 quarter pint jars for boiling water bath canning.

In a large saucepan, bring fruit, sugar, pepper, and lemon to a hard boil. After 10 minutes of boiling check for gel by placing a plate in the freezer. Place a small amount of jam on the plate and freeze for 30 seconds. When you can run your finger through the jam and it holds it shape without running together, it’s gelled.

Fill jars and process for 10 minutes using a boiling water canner. Or, you can freeze the jam for up to one year.

I did BWB process these jars. If you are not familiar with how to boiling water bath process food for canning, please make sure to read over a source like the Ball Blue Book or the National Center for Home Food Preservation. Canning is not particularly difficult, but it’s also not a process that you should take lightly. This recipe assumes you know the basics of boiling water bath canning. If you are not comfortable with canning, this recipe can be stored in the freezer for 1 year.

I am giving March the theme of Canning Month; 2016 is a year that requires themes for me to post consistently.

I want to start canning early this year-a lot of this list I can make with frozen produce or other supplies I can get at Target with cards from S.w.agbu.cks. So March will be covering a lot of older recipes or trying new ideas (I want to try Firestarter with dried peppers).

I didn’t get through a lot of last year’s list so this may be a repeat to older readers.

A lot of the canning recipes that I post on this blog are actually a sort of digital diary for me. I have a notebook that I use-and then lose and then refind and lose again. It’s just easier to post them on here.

I’ve been on a relish kick lately. Summer dinners around here are often hot dogs, burgers, or pasta salads where I just stir tuna and relish into the bowl. It gets a lot hotter and a lot nastier in Buffalo than a lot of people give the city credit for, and I don’t like to spend a lot of time cooking when it’s like that.

…We’ll ignore the hours of canning that I do in weather like that.

The summer squash and zucchinis are starting to show up, and show up cheaply. They’re $.99 a tray and less than a dollar a piece at the farmer’s markets. They’ll just get cheaper from here on out.

I used the Zesty Zucchini Relish recipe from Ball (the small batch version from the book that comes with the discovery kit). I made very few changes, so I won’t post the recipe.

I used dried horseradish because I already had it, I skipped the salt soak and added a little to the brine instead, used a zucchini, a yellow squash, a cucumber, and an onion, halved the sugar and used apple cider vinegar. I used dried chilis instead of fresh.

I let it cook down too much (note to self: it takes a lot less time to get a canner up to speed when you start with hot water. Start with hot water.) and the brine cooked down too much. I topped off the jars with plain apple cider vinegar.

Now that the wedding is over I’ll go back to the normal balance of horror and food but right now my free time is spent canning.

I don’t think while I’m canning. Well, confession, I think about Chris Pratt while I’m canning but I don’t think about the more important stuff that slowly drives me insane. So this is mental health maintenance as much as anything.

I adore Saving by the Season, but I’ve never actually cooked from it before. I look at the projects,sometimes use the spice combinations for different projects, and get ideas-but a lot of the recipes that I would use, are in line with the recipes I already use. But the book is very nice to just read and look at.

One of my summer projects this year is to cook more out of my canning cookbooks. There is a recipe in the book for peaches in tea syrup, and with my sister’s wedding, I don’t have a lot of time to cook down jam or similar.

The recipe is pretty straightforward-brewed tea, sugar, citric acid, peaches. I steeped four tea bags in my syrup water, brought the sugar, water, and acid to a boil and blanched my peaches for five minutes. The peaches were hot packed.

The smell was amazing. I hope they end up tasting good, and not bitter. I did notice they foamed up more than normal.